May 25, 2010

New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, a graduate course for tech-savvy artists, has opened its doors to showcase student work in future technologies. Students with undergraduate degrees ranging from medicine to performance art flock to the two-year programme to study robotics, web development and mobile applications.

May 24, 2010

In the next few weeks Facebook will officially cross the 500 million user mark, placing the size of the social network at 67% larger than the total population of the United States. According to AllFacebook several Facebook sources have confirmed an event to celebrate the momentous occasion. This massive landmark comes amid a difficult time for the company in the public sphere, with numerous pundits criticizing the company over privacy concerns.

In what looks to be a fusion of Steve Jobs and Stephen Crane, advanced placement students next year will be equipped with iPod Touches for use in English classes. Or perhaps a better analogy would be Shakespeare meets IPod. Students at Colquitt County High School will use the devices, which will have podcasting software, in English literature and language classrooms.

I’ll be graduating with a spanking-new computer science degree this spring. I’ve worked in tech support while I’ve been in school, but obviously I want to move beyond that. Which direction should I go, and what can I expect? The best choice would be in the engineering area. There is great demand in most of the larger engineering firms. This could consist of actual coding or system integration.

May 23, 2010

Are universities losing their influence over the tech sector? Yes, argues Greg Smith, chief information officer at George Fox University, in a provocative post on his blog. The influence stemmed from how students’ computing experience would affect their future buying habits, he says. As evidence of its decline, he points to how Apple “has not been catering to higher education with their shift to the new iPad consumer line,” and how Microsoft seems relatively unconcerned about universities as it tries to retain its business and government markets.

Ten-year-old Ben Hall likes that he can do all of his schoolwork without using either end of a pencil. Ben, a fourth-grader at Berthoud Elementary School, is one of 23 students in Thompson School District who get to try out the iPad — a touch-screen tablet computer by Apple with built-in applications — during the last month of the school year. “It can help you with tons of things, and you don’t have to use paper,” said Ben, 10, adding that if he makes a mistake, he likes being able to hit delete instead of having to erase.

At Mobicip.com, we work with schools deploying iPod Touch-based 1:1 learning programs for their students. That is how I heard about a high-school student campaigning for the use of technology in education. I believe his voice should be heard, and this interview is my contribution towards that end.iSchool Initiative is a student-led non-profit organization dedicated to bringing technology to the classroom. We have three objectives – raising awareness for the technological needs of the classroom, providing collaborative research on the use of technology in the classroom, and guiding schools in the implementation of this technology.

May 22, 2010

A Pennsylvania school district under legal fire for using school laptops that captured images of students in their homes without disclosing the activity has issued a lengthy report that summarizes the findings of an investigation into the matter. The independent investigation performed for the Lower Merion School District in Ardmore concluded that while nobody in the district behaved in an intentional or manipulative manner, the school laptops performed inappropriate tracking activities that should have been turned off much sooner than they were.

Jennifer Larson uncovers the most and least profitable college majors, and the highest and lowest paying college degrees, in this two part series for Money College. Part Two runs next week, with the least profitable careers for your academic investment.

I quickly learned to use the “floppy disks” that were the standard way to save and transfer data from one computer to another. Truthfully, by the time I began using these disks they were no longer floppy. That was from an earlier era in the 1960s, but somehow the name stuck. The disks I remember, and that I still have a fair share of, were the 3 1/2- inch disks I used to install the software on the Mac Performa my family bought back in the mid-1990s. I still have that Performa, although it is gathering dust in my office along with some LPs, cassette tapes and a nice tidy stack of floppy disks. After a 30-year run, Sony will no longer manufacture the disks, which items like CDs, DVDS and flash drives have rendered obsolete.

May 21, 2010

Google Wave is fully released! Invitations no longer required. The revolutionary new free collaboration tool from the undisputed leader in online technologies promises to change the way we integrate Web 2.0 into our teaching and learning. With more than three million people worldwide already using Wave, the technology is quickly becoming the preferred new tool for online collaboration. Integrating Twitter, iframe Web windows, instant polling, drag-and-drop documents, native text chat modes, mind maps, streaming video, audio, and much more – all into a single slick Wiki platform, Wave is the ideal tool for group projects, reflective journaling, and class collaborations.

This Wednesday, May 26 Webinar will introduce participants to the new technology and provide examples of effective uses of the technology, resource sites, and access to a Wave “sandbox” to test out the many gadgets, bots and extensions available in this exciting new technology.

WITI -Women In Technology International announced today the recipients of the 15th Annual WITI Hall of Fame Awards to be honored on the evening of September 13, 2010 during the three day Annual WITI Women and Technology Summit in San Jose, California September 12-14. The WITI Hall of Fame Awards, sponsored by the WITI Foundation, are considered one of the most prestigious honors for women in science and technology. Katherine Boehret of the Wall Street Journal will serve as Master of Ceremonies, while many of the industry’s top executives and professionals will introduce the honorees. “Historically, too many notable achievements by women have gone unrecognized. The WITI Hall of Fame Awards was founded to provide a platform to recognize women whose contributions to technology and science and commitment to advancing women can be celebrated and recorded. WITI Hall of Fame winners stand as role models to inspire future generations to pursue groundbreaking solutions in technology and science,” says Carolyn Leighton, WITI Founder and Chairwoman.

This year the school had the computers to open a much-needed third computer lab, but connecting it to existing labs and the Internet posed a problem. The school’s existing two labs were on one side of the school and the third needed to be closer to the students it was going to serve who were on the other side of the building. The desired location of the lab also would have made it very costly to wire traditionally, she said. The only real option was to set up a wireless lab.

Imagine for just a second, how the publisher/textbook industry would change if every student in a classroom had a tablet. Textbooks would no longer be printed on paper (the environment thanks you), and the publishers could then charge a “rental” fee or subscription. The information could be immediately updated unlike the current format of a textbook that in some instances is obsolete before it is in the hands of the user.

May 20, 2010

A science teacher at Bluffton High School said his school e-mail privileges and access to other online accounts were suspended Thursday after he sent an e-mail that criticized the school system to nearly all employees in the Beaufort County School District. Mike Sanz, a former assistant principal at Hilton Head Island Middle School, said the district is investigating whether he violated its acceptable use policy for technology. He said his laptop — issued by the district — was taken as part of that investigation. The 1,700-word e-mail Sanz sent Wednesday afternoon from his district account says three pillars of quality education — respect, discipline and courage — have eroded and must be rebuilt.

Last year, Nick Bianchi was learning physics from a textbook. Now, the 18-year-old is a freshman studying three-dimensional models of structures at the atomic level at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University at Albany. He’s adjusted his entire learning style to a million dollar computer lab where he can apply nanoscale technology to real-world issues. On Thursday, he mapped a miniscule circuit board as one of his final projects in the first semester of undergraduate-level coursework. “You get more out of this because you’re getting more than a picture out of a textbook,” Bianchi said.

Federal stimulus funding is expected to bridge the digital divide for about 750 students in the Madison, Brooklyn and Venice school districts. Under a recently-announced $850,000 state grant, 755 third- through 12th-graders in the districts will receive a laptop or digital notebook. Fifty-seven educators will also get new technology and training.

May 19, 2010

University students and professors worldwide have used waves within and beyond the classroom to collaborate on Latin poetry translations, write academic research papers and even build new functionality with Wave’s APIs. An ICT teacher also enjoyed having her 5th-graders do their class research in Wave. Now the Wave is open to all – no more invitations; no more waiting. Let the learning waving begin!http://googlewave.blogspot.com/2010/05/google-wave-available-for-everyone.html

New data today coming from the SmashSummit puts Twitter in new light. Sure, Compete says that Twitter is stagnant or shrinking but that is hardly the case. Twitter, now some 105,779,710 users strong is growing by 300,000 users a day. That works out to over 8% growth a month. Facebook by comparison has over 400 million active users, and is growing by over 500,000 new users daily.

Even as work crews and scientists mobilized over a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, high school students in this city were hard at work cleaning up another spill — in the virtual world. Teachers say the use of virtual worlds encourages problem-solving, allowing classroom knowledge to be used in real-life situations. Students like Christian Lopez jumped into an elaborate video game, called Spill, in which they assumed on-screen identities known as avatars to run cleanup efforts for the mayor of New City. The game, devised to help students sharpen their business acumen and skills, was rolled out in more than 750 schools across the country as part of a business contest in March and April.

Women may still be a minority in the technology industry but they are establishing strong support networks to stay connected. An event at London’s recent Sci-Fi film festival was aimed at women and produced by women – with the aim of supporting female comic book artists and creators. Girl Geek Dinners has grown from a London-based gathering to groups all over the world including Australia, Canada, America and throughout Europe. Similar organisations also host events designed to encourage women in technology.